Facets

by Barbara Delinsky

  “That’s because of the flow of the current. If it’s a little faster or a little slower, a little to the left or the right, the ripples are different.”

  “Like snowflakes.”

  “Kind of.”

  “Gone so fast.”

  “Yes.”

  “But so pretty.”

  As Cutter watched her, listened to her, he marveled at her appreciation. It was hard to believe that her family was wealthy. She probably had a room full of pretty things all her own in Boston, and in Timiny Cove, too. That she should be entranced by ripples in a stream—and by snowflakes and by unpolished tourmaline crystals—was a tribute both to her and to Eugene.

  Straightening, she wiped her damp hands on the seat of her pants. “I have to go, Cutter.”

  He led the way back through the woods to where he’d tethered the horse. When she was up on its back again, she said shyly, “I liked that. Will you take me there again?”

  He nodded. Taking the reins, he began to walk her down the rutted road.

  “You don’t have to lead me.”

  “Just to the main road.”

  “You don’t have to, Cutter.”

  But he did. Pam was Eugene’s daughter; she was special. If anything happened to her, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself. He felt responsible for her. It was a new feeling, and not bothersome at all.

  She must have sensed it, because she came to visit often after that. She always came alone, never stayed long, never made a pest of herself. She actually seemed afraid of taking too much of his time, which was amusing since he had neither family nor friends whose company he would prefer. He wanted to tell her to stay as long as she wanted and come back as soon as she could. But he didn’t. It didn’t seem appropriate. She was a little girl, seven years younger than he. He didn’t want people getting the wrong idea.

  Their friendship was innocent. They didn’t even talk much at first. They explored the woods, or listened to Cutter’s radio, or simply sat on his front porch, and Cutter enjoyed it. A whirlwind of chatter with others, Pam was calm and undemanding with him. He liked to think that she liked him, that she liked his home, that she chose to be with him over all the other options she had. He knew she trusted him. He liked to think that she felt as good as he did after their visits.

  Gradually they started to talk. It happened during the year Pam turned twelve, when, for several visits running, she wasn’t as ebullient as usual. Afraid that he’d done something wrong, that she was finding her visits with him a bore but didn’t know how to end them, he asked her about it.

  “It’s nothing,” she said quietly.

  “You don’t look happy.”

  “I am.” She produced a smile, but it lacked brilliance.

  “If you’d rather be back at the house with your father—”

  “He’s with John,” she interrupted, the smile abruptly replaced by a frown. “When I left, they were arguing. They’re always doing that, Cutter.” She told him about it in a rush, then when she ran out of breath she grew quiet again.

  He sensed that she felt disloyal talking about John, so he didn’t push. But she was back the next day, telling him a little more. She seemed to need the outlet, and though he didn’t have any answers for her, he got the feeling that she was pleased that he listened.

  The proof of that came over the course of the next few months, when talking became a vital part of their relationship. At first it was just Pam, opening up about the situation at home. Cutter wasn’t one to open up; he’d been keeping his thoughts to himself for as long as he could remember. But she began to ask about his life, pointed questions that were like a step-by-step guide to the art of confession. Coming from anyone else, those questions would have made him suspicious. Coming from Pam, they weren’t offensive. Just as she trusted him, he’d come to trust her.

  “I heard Leroy telling Rufus about something that happened at the mine yesterday. You were there, Cutter. They said that you were talking right up. Was it bad?”

  Cutter shrugged. “It turned out okay.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jethro fell. He’s okay.”

  “But he wasn’t at first. Rufus said he couldn’t get up. Poor Jethro. He doesn’t walk so well. Was it his legs again?”

  “He has arthritis pretty bad. Once he’s up and standing, he’s okay. It’s getting there that’s the problem.”

  “So what happened yesterday?”

  Cutter recalled the incident only too well. Tightly, he said, “Simon and John were walking by. Jethro was sitting down, taking a rest. Simon doesn’t usually say anything when he does that, because he still does his work. But John was there, so Simon complained. Jethro hurried to stand up. He lost his footing and fell.”

  “You helped him up.”

  “Rufus said that?”

  “And that you said something to Simon.”

  “Well, hell, it wasn’t right,” Cutter argued. “Old Jethro tries. He does the best he can. He’s there at work every morning and stays till the end of the day, and he’s good. I’ve never seen him crack a stone. Eugene knows he isn’t feeling good. So does Simon. And they’re usually pretty easy on him. So now, all of a sudden, Simon yells. And John picks up on it and says that he shouldn’t be working there. Right in front of him. So I told Simon that Jethro knew more about mining tourmaline than anyone but Eugene, and that he was the one who told us all what to do when Simon was out on another coffee break.” He snickered. “Simon didn’t much like my saying that.”

  “But he’d never fire you.”

  “He might, but not for that. Because I was right. And he knew Eugene would agree with me. Jethro’s been working for Eugene even longer than Simon has. So now his legs’re bothering him. What’s he supposed to do? He’s not trained for anything else, and anyway, no one would hire him. He’s too old. But he still has to eat.”

  Pam’s eyes were large. “Did you say all that to Simon?”

  “No way. He was looking annoyed enough from my comment about the coffee. And John was standing right there,” having already made a comment about Cutter’s minding his own business. “I wasn’t pushing my luck.”

  “You don’t like John?”

  Of all the questions she’d asked, that was the hardest to answer. He wanted to say a resounding no, but he still had to keep in mind that John was Pam’s brother. She didn’t like him, herself; she’d made that clear, but he shouldn’t be the one doing the bad-mouthing. If she were his age or older, it might have been different. But she was just a kid.

  So he shrugged and said, “John’s okay.”

  “You like him?” she asked in disbelief, and the issue suddenly became one of Cutter’s credibility.

  “I didn’t say that. I said he’s okay. He’s not around too much. And besides, it’s not my job to like him or not like him. He’s your brother. He’s my boss’s son. He is my boss in a way.”

  “But how can you like him?”

  “I don’t like him,” he shot back defensively, which went to prove, he realized later, that he was putty in Pam’s hands.

  She breathed a sigh of relief and said, sounding far older than her years, “I’m glad to hear that. I was beginning to think I was the only one who hated him so much.”

  No, Cutter thought, she wasn’t the only one. Most of the men at the mine disliked John, but it was worse for Cutter. John went out of his way to put him down. Cutter found that hard to take, even when he told himself that it was because John was jealous. John didn’t have anywhere near as smooth a relationship with Eugene as Cutter did. Cutter figured that any son in a like position would be jealous. But that didn’t give John the right to punish him, especially not in front of everyone at the mine. He had his pride, too.

  That pride took some twists that Cutter didn’t expect in the months that followed. The incident with Jethro Lamall was the first of several in which he found himself speaking up against something he considered unfair. Eugene was never the problem. Once in a while, Simon
was, but it was usually at John’s instigation.

  John was the problem. Cutter was sure that if John were around more, most of the miners would quit. The fact that he wasn’t there for more than a week out of every four was some consolation to the havoc his presence wreaked. He had specific opinions on running the mines. Although Eugene had been running things well for some thirty-odd years, John was convinced he knew better. Inevitably he either wanted to work the men harder or pay them on a scale based on output. Even the younger men, who had strength and stamina on their side and could produce more than the older men, were against that. The older men were their fathers, their brothers, their friends.

  Cutter wasn’t anyone’s brother or son. He had no family to support. He didn’t have to worry that if he angered John, retribution might take the form of punishment to people he loved. He didn’t have as much to lose as the others.

  That was one of the reasons why he came to their defense. Another was the same defiance that had driven him so often in the past. He didn’t like John. He didn’t like being put down by John. Speaking up to him in front of the other miners brought a deep satisfaction, particularly when it had to do with justice, and especially when it had to do with something he was sure Eugene believed in, too. In an odd way, Cutter felt that he, more than Simon, was Eugene’s on-site representative at the mine.

  The other miners came to feel that way too; increasingly they looked to Cutter when something went wrong. While he had no desire to be a hero and continued to keep to himself once he left the mine at the end of the day, he wasn’t adverse to championing the workers’ causes. It gave him a good feeling. It gave him a sense of power.

  John didn’t like that much, which enhanced its appeal. Cutter began speaking up just to let John know that the other miners respected him. Simon respected him too—or respected the fact that the other miners looked to him for leadership—and occasionally left him in charge of things at the site. Since John was never around at those times, there was little joy in it for Cutter. He didn’t aspire to be a foreman. He didn’t like the idea of ordering the other men around. Whatever leadership potential he had he used in his silent battle with John. Power, in any other context, didn’t excite him.

  “Daddy and John were arguing again today,” Pam told him one late-summer evening. Cutter had gone into town for a six-pack of beer and had found her sitting on the steps outside Leroy’s store. Unable to resist, he sat down beside her. “It was about you this time.”

  “About me?” he said with a half-smile. She looked so serious, so grown-up, so adorable in a T-shirt and cut-off jeans, with her hair in a single long ponytail and her feet bare.

  “Daddy was saying that you’ll be in charge of the mine someday. John didn’t think so.”

  “No, I doubt he would. But he doesn’t have to worry. I don’t want to be in charge of the mine.”

  Pam looked startled. “Why not? You’d be in charge of everyone. You’d get more money.”

  “And more headaches.”

  “Do you get headaches now?”

  “No. But Simon does.”

  “That’s because John makes him nervous.”

  “John makes me nervous.”

  “But you can fight him,” she urged with a touch of excitement. “Simon can’t. He’s too old. He senses a shift in power.”

  Cutter was always amazed at Pam’s instincts when it came to the business. Nudging her side, he asked, “How do you know that?”

  “I can see it.”

  “Little girls aren’t supposed to see things like that. They’re supposed to be sweet and innocent.”

  “For God’s sake, Cutter, I’m nearly thirteen.”

  He grinned. “Hard to believe. Or not hard at all. Depends on how you look at it.” He held his head back and peered at her. “You’re gettin’ taller, all right.”

  “Don’t talk down to me,” she said more soberly.

  “But you are getting taller.”

  “And older. And I see things. I do, Cutter. And you’re trying to change the subject.”

  “What is the subject?”

  “John. You could fight him, and Daddy would be on your side.”

  “But John is his son,” Cutter said, all kidding forgotten. “It’s not my place to come between them that way.”

  “Not even so you could get ahead at the mine?”

  “I don’t want to get ahead at the mine. There are lots of other guys who want Simon’s job, and they’ve been working for Eugene a lot longer than me.”

  “But Daddy likes you.”

  Cutter knew that. Still, it didn’t change certain things.

  “If you don’t want to be a foreman, what do you want to be?”

  He rested his weight back on the heels of his hands and looked out across the street. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to leave here and get a job in the city?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to work in the mine all your life?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But don’t you dream things?”

  “Not much,” he said. He didn’t dream of being rich or famous. He didn’t dream of being a boss and ordering people around. His life now was so much better than it had been before that he was pretty satisfied. Sometimes he dreamed of little things—a little more money, a little bigger house, maybe a car, maybe even a car with a stereo. He figured he’d have those things one day.

  “I think you ought to come to work in Boston. That’s what Hillary’s doing. She just got a job working for the paper. It’s interesting, she says.”

  Cutter knew Hillary Cox, just as he knew almost everyone in Timiny Cove. She’d been gone awhile, but word had a way of filtering back. “Hillary’s a writer. I’m not.”

  “You could be. You read all the time.”

  “Reading has nothing to do with writing.”

  “We read Lord of the Flies in English class, by the way. I don’t think I liked it. It was pretty depressing.”

  “It was supposed to be. It was supposed to be an example of what might happen if there wasn’t any order to things.” With deliberate nonchalance he asked, “What did your teacher say about it?” He liked it when Pam told him things like that. It made him think. Sometimes he even went back and reread a particular book after they had talked.

  “Kind of what you did,” Pam said, “about order and rules and laws. She said the author was making a statement that there’s evil deep down inside us, but I’d never have done what Jack and Roger did.”

  He nearly smiled at the appalled look on her face. But evil wasn’t a smiling matter. More than once he had wondered what he’d have done on that deserted island. “Are you sure? Not even if you were in the situation they were? Not even if you were lost and frightened and started imagining all sorts of things?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t have.”

  Cutter wasn’t so sure he could say the same. He’d have done almost anything to feel safer when he was younger. “Maybe that’s because you’re a girl,” he said a little distractedly.

  “No.” She was about to elaborate when John drove up in his Thunderbird. Pam’s features immediately darkened. “What does he want?”

  Cutter grew alert. He allowed himself to admire the car, a shiny blue convertible with the top up. As soon as John climbed out, though, looking perfect in cuffed khaki pants and a shirt with a little alligator on the front, his admiration died.

  “I’m going inside,” Pam murmured. Very slowly she rose from the step where she’d been seated. She looked at John for an impertinent minute, then, with incredible dignity, Cutter thought, turned and walked into Leroy’s store.

  “Did I disturb something?” John asked in a voice that was nearly as cold as his eyes.

  Cutter was determined to be just as cool. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you two were sitting pretty close. What are you doing with my sister, Cutter?”

  “Talking. R
ight here on Main Street where everyone can see.”

  “You see her more than that. I know she goes to your place sometimes. Is that by invitation?”

  Cutter didn’t bother to answer.

  “If you’re hoping to use her to get something from my father, it won’t work.”

  “I don’t need anything from your father.”

  “You need a job.”

  “I already have one.”

  “At our discretion.”

  “I do my work, and I do it well,” he challenged, beginning to burn inside. “Fire me for no reason, and you’ll have half of the others walking out on you.”

  “I’ll have good reason if I find you diddling with my sister.”

  The burning increased. “Why would I want to diddle with your sister when I have a damn sexy woman doin’ all the diddlin’ I want?”

  “She’s not bad, Lenore isn’t,” John mused smugly.

  Cutter couldn’t help himself. “She doesn’t think quite so highly of you.”

  John’s smugness vanished. “Stay away from my sister, Cutter. You are aware that she’s a minor, aren’t you?”

  “Minor? She’s a little girl.”

  “No girl’s too little to fool around with, but if I were you, I’d watch it. You touch a hair on her head, and you’ll have me and half the lawmen in the state to answer to.”

  Struggling to contain his anger, Cutter rose. He was nearly John’s height and every bit as strong, and while he didn’t have money and polish on his side, he had pride. “Pam is my friend, just like she’s a friend to everyone else in this town. And she’s Eugene’s daughter. I’d lay down my life to keep her safe.” But he couldn’t leave it at that. The demon inside wouldn’t let him. “The way I see it, she has more to fear from you than from me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re the one with the brains. You figure it out.” He started off, but John caught his arm.

  “You’re asking for trouble.”

  Cutter gave the hand on his arm a long stare before raising his eyes to John’s. “I’m not askin’ for a thing ’cept that you leave me alone.” He shook his arm hard. John’s hand fell away.